1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus, such as a printer.
2. Related Art
Among ink jet-type printers that are examples of a liquid ejecting apparatus, there are printers that discharge a cleaning agent as a mist to nozzles that eject ink, dissolve solid components of the ink fixed to the periphery of the nozzles or the vicinity of the openings and blow and remove the dissolved materials by the discharge of a gas (for example, JP-A-2002-178529).
Incidentally, in a case where clogging occurs in a nozzle, it is possible to resolve the nozzle clogging by vigorously introducing droplets of a cleaning agent to the inside of the nozzle. However, the meniscus (curved liquid surface) formed inside the nozzle may collapse, and the ejection capacity of the nozzle may be lowered when droplets of the cleaning solution enter into a nozzle which is not clogged. In this way, because the results of the maintenance vary according to the state of the nozzle in a case of performing maintenance of the liquid ejecting unit having nozzles with the droplets, a problem arises of the efficiency of the maintenance being poor.
Such a problem is not limited to printers that perform printing while ejecting ink, and is generally common in liquid ejecting apparatuses having nozzles for ejecting liquids.